In ancient Greece and Rome, a catamite (Latin: catamitus) was a pubescent boy who was the intimate companion of a young man, usually in a pederastic relationship.[1] It was generally a term of affection and literally means "Ganymede" in Latin, but it was also used as a term of insult when directed toward a grown man.[2] The word derives from the proper nounCatamitus, the Latinized form of Ganymede, the name of the beautiful Trojan youth abducted by Zeus to be his companion and cupbearer, according to Greek mythology.[3] The Etruscan form of the name was Catmite, from an alternative Greek form of the name, Gadymedes.[4]

In its modern usage, the term catamite refers to a boy as the passive or receiving partner in anal intercourse with a man.[5]

C. S. Lewis in his partial autobiography Surprised by Joy described the social roles during his time at Wyvern College (by which he meant Malvern College) as including the role of "Tart": "a pretty and effeminate-looking small boy who acts as a catamite to one or more of his seniors..." and noted that "pederasty...was not [frowned upon as seriously as] wearing one's coat unbuttoned." [6]

Anthony Burgess's 1980 novel Earthly Powers uses the word in its[7] opening sentence: "It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me."

In the postapocalyptic landscape of Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road, the narrator describes an army on the move on foot with "women, perhaps a dozen in number, some of them pregnant, and lastly a supplementary consort of catamites." [8]